Search results for ""edward elgar publishing""

Econometrics, Macroeconomics and Economic Policy presents eighteen papers by Carl Christ focusing on econometric models, their evaluation and history, and the interactions between monetary and fiscal policy.Professor Christ’s pioneering contributions to econometrics, monetary and fiscal policies and the government’s budget constraint are thoroughly covered in this volume. Other areas addressed include monetary economics, monetary policy, macroeconomic model building, and the role of the economist in economic policy making. The book also features an original new introduction by the author and a detailed bibliography.Econometricians and macroeconomists will welcome this outstanding volume in which Professor Christ argues firmly for the importance of testing econometric equations and models against new data, as well as for exploring the impact of the policies of central government.

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In this major book an internationally acclaimed group of scholars examines theoretical and applied topics of particular relevance to public choice analysis.Current Issues in Public Choice demonstrates the fruitfulness and originality of the Public Choice School. These twelve papers have been prepared by some of the most prominent scholars in economic science, including James M. Buchanan, Amartya K. Sen, Bruno S. Frey, Jon Elster, Geoffrey Brennan and Gordon Tullock. Specific areas covered include the foundations of public choice theory, its scope and method, constitutional economics, game theory, rent-seeking, the European Union, public finance and the theory of societal economics.The pioneering research, theory and analysis brought together in this volume will be widely and profitably used by economists, political scientists and public and social choice scholars seeking insight into fundamental theoretical issues and applied analyses on current affairs.

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Financial Innovation, Banking and Monetary Aggregates reviews the impact of financial innovation on the measurement of money and presents the first collection of country studies appraising the usefulness of Divisia indices in deriving monetary aggregates.Monetary aggregates are traditionally formed by simply summing various monetary components such as cash and balances in savings and cheque accounts. The monetary usefulness, or 'moneyness', of these components differs and can change as a result of innovation in banking, monetary transmission and payment services. To gauge the importance of such distortions and the merits of alternative weighted monetary indices, particularly Divisia indices, this volume brings together authoritative empirical studies of countries including the US, the UK, Germany, France, Sweden, Italy and Japan. The authors conclude by showing how Divisia monetary indices act as a useful supplement to traditional monetary aggregates.Financial Innovation, Banking and Monetary Aggregates will be welcomed by economists and financiers for questioning traditional assumptions about the usefulness of monetary aggregates and for its discussion of the wider implications of financial innovation in the banking sector.

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Migration in Europe is a pressing social and political issue for the policy makers of the 1990s. Drawing upon a wide body of knowledge, expertise and analysis, European Migration in the Late Twentieth Century combines an important survey with a series of detailed country studies on migration in Europe.The authoritative overview essay by the editors examines migration to and within Europe. They compare the flows during the last forty years with the present situation, detailing both the magnitude and geography of migration over this period. This is followed by thirteen individual country studies each of which features an historical introduction to emigration and immigration in the featured country, quantitative data sets and a detailed assessment of the social and political implications. These studies - specially prepared by leading scholars - cover the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy, Israel, Austria, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, the former Yugoslavia and the former USSR.This comprehensive and scholarly book will be welcomed by teachers and researchers of social sciences and history for presenting new insights on one of the key political, social and economic issues facing modern Europe.

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This is the second of three volumes containing the published and unpublished economic papers of Orley Ashenfelter written between 1966 and 1994. A complete and cross-referenced chronological list of all of the works featured in this set is included. The volumes begin with an interview in which Professor Ashenfelter covers highlights of his professional life, a discussion of many of the essays and papers featured in these volumes, and his reflections on the development of economics over the course of his career. Employment, Labor Unions and Wages and Economic Institutions and the Demand and Supply of Labor are the companion volumes to Education, Training and Discrimination, which together provide a distinguished collection of Ashenfelter’s essays.These three volumes contain a selection of the published and unpublished economic papers of Orley Ashenfelter written between 1966 and 1993. A complete and cross-referenced chronological list of all the works featured in this set is included. The volumes begin with an interview of Professor Ashenfelter which covers highlights of his professional life, a discussion of many of the essays and papers featured in these volumes, and his reflections on the development of economics over the course of his career.

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The Economic Impact of New Firms in Post-Socialist Countries analyses the emergence and contribution of new entrepreneurs in the transforming economies of Eastern Europe.Small firms and new enterprises are widely assumed to play an important role in the process of economic development and transformation. The contributors to this volume investigate how far small and newly founded enterprises have compensated for losses in employment and contributed to economic recovery in Eastern Europe. With analysis based on new empirical data, this extensive volume covers the situation in Russia, Estonia, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Romania and Slovenia as well as East Germany. Issues covered include attempts to stimulate entrepreneurship, guidelines for successful bottom-up transformation and the prospects for new and small firms in Eastern Europe.The Economic Impact of New Firms in Post-Socialist Countries will be welcomed for its detailed, empirically-founded discussion of entrepreneurship, micro-level studies of transition, small business economics and comparative economic systems.

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For years the small-firm sector of the economy remained an enigma. However, recently researchers have assembled a far better understanding of the economic role of small firms. One of the surprising findings is that small and medium-sized firms, and entrepreneurship, have become increasingly more important to the economies of both developed and developing countries than previously acknowledged. The purpose of these volumes is to bring together for the first time this diffuse and rich literature on the whole subject of small firms and economic growth. This volume will provide a basic resource for all those engaged with the subject as students, teachers and researchers.

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In recent years a growing number of social scientists have become increasingly interested in the study of location problems. This interest has been fostered by the integration of national economies within broader spaces such as the EU or NAFTA as well as by their impact on the development of regions and cities. Another important reason for this attention is the growing awareness among economists that a comprehensive economic theory can no longer put space aside. Most economic activities are distributed over space, and for such activities space moulds the very nature of competition between firms. This major collection of classic articles demonstrates the important contribution of location theory and will be an essential source of reference for students or researchers of modern regional science or economic theory.

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John Locke (1632-1704), the English philosopher, has had a wide-ranging influence on modern political thought. Locke’s political philosophy is based on the premise that by nature human beings are equal and that therefore no-one is under the authority of another unless by his own consent. In Locke’s view, natural law constitutes and protects rights of life, liberty and property. His writings are a turning point in the theory of natural rights, linking constitutionalism and toleration. The impact of his ideas can be seen in the American constitution, in the French Revolution and in the development of modern liberalism. His theory of property is a basis for modern discussion of the subject and its emphasis on labour as a source of value and entitlement forms the background for the later economics of both Adam Smith and Karl Marx.The articles contained in these volumes have been carefully selected in order to put Locke’s work in a wider context. They explore various aspects of Locke’s political theory and investigate his theories on property, natural law, the ‘state of nature’ and toleration.

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The work of David Hume (1711-76), the Scottish historian and philosopher, constitutes a break with the assumptions of his predecessors who suggested that our ideas and practices answered to a rational design, whether divine or human. Instead Hume emphasized the origins of our ideas in sensation, suggested that reason was properly the slave of the passions, and located the origins of social and political institutions in utility and sentiment.Hume's philosophy found its complement in his political essays and History of England, which emhphasized unintended results and the complexity of the historical process. Altogether Hume’s work constitutes the first thoroughgoing attempt since the rise of Christianity to characterize human experience in terms that offered an alternative to theologically-based or para-theological theories. As such, its importance for subsequent developments, like that of Kant’s work, is not to be underestimated.This significant anthology contains articles on different aspects of his thought - his historical works, his political scepticism, his concepts of justice, liberty and property and moral evaluation.

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Hugo Grotius (1583-1645), the Dutch jurist and philosopher, is a key theorist of the post-mediaeval state. According to Grotius, the state is not subject to any terrestrial superior, either political or ecclesiastical. His political writings develop the consequences of this condition including the construction of state authority in terms of 'natural rights', acknowledging the right to self-protection and the needs of individuals. A further development is the idea that the state is the instrument of justice beyond its own boundaries. He asserted that there were universal moral standards that could be used to judge questions of international conflict. This universal morality was based on two prinicples: that self-preservation is always legitimate; and that wanton injury of another is always illegitimate. [On this foundation, rules for reconciling conflict could be erected and the existence of civil society explained.] These views have characterised much political thought from Grotius' day to the present and have played their part in the history of international law.This collection of articles presents in chronological order the writings of 20th century authors on Grotius and covers such topics as the life of Grotius, the evolution of his ideas, his contribution to the theory of ‘natural law’ and his wider significance as a political thinker.

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Aristotle (384-322 BC) was born in Northern Greece. He moved to Athens where he associated himself with Plato’s academy. He later became tutor to the young Alexander the Great at the Macedonian court but returned to Athens in 335 to found his own school of philosophy.Aristotle’s basic political contention was that the state is a natural entity and is the perfect form of human community. This view of man’s relation to the state has been one of the most persistent in the history of political thought and has been developed in many ways by a multitude of thinkers. [In his own writings Aristotle developed and explained existing political arrangements rather than offering radical alternatives, and this conservative practicality was highly regarded by political thinkers prior to 1789. On the other hand, the high evaluation which Aristotle placed on the middle orders of society appeals to readers of a more egalitarian age.]The articles in this scholarly collection offer insights into many areas of Aristotle’s work, including ‘forms of government, the place of the individual in relation to the state and ethical, economic and ‘sociological considerations.

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The most persistent theme of Nathan Rosenberg's work is a concern with the emergence and diffusion of economic ideas. Bringing together Professor Rosenberg's many contributions to the history of economic thought, this volume offers a series of important insights on how economics itself emerged as a distinct discipline.The Emergence of Economic Ideas extends our understanding of the development of capitalist institutions and the manner in which these institutions have contributed to the unique technological dynamism of capitalist societies. The book also - and necessarily - focuses upon the emergence of ideas about capitalism. That is to say, the discipline of economics is itself a body of ideas, and analytical techniques, that have been developed over the past two centuries in order to explain how capitalist economies have developed and how they work. Professor Rosenberg examines the key contributions - from Mandeville, Adam Smith, Babbage, Marx, Schumpeter and Stigler - in the growth of this critical collection of ideas.Economists interested in the emergence of their discipline and historians of ideas will welcome this collection which will make Professor Rosenberg's many substantial contributions more widely accessible to teachers, students and researchers.

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This important collection presents in two volumes the most significant papers on the history of mass production and highlights crucial debates in the attempt to understand the phenomenon and its social and economic effects. The selection focuses on six important themes. Volume I opens with an exploration of the antecedents to mass production and an investigation of the mechanical, economic and social roots of the transformation in production methods at the beginning of the 20th century. The following section examines the emergence of ‘Fordism’ and the fundamental elements of the new system. The final section describes the extent to which mass production has spread through the wider economy and the ways in which it has changed in the process.In Volume II, the first section covers the impact of mass production on work and the workers. The second section looks at how Japan has exploited the principles of mass production and may indeed have evolved a new form of productive organisation. The concluding section raises the question of whether in the late 20th century the dominance of mass production is in decline.

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Law and Migration is an authoritative volume which draws on statutory and case law to expose the limitations of the law in protecting the individual caught in the complex web of national and regional constraints on migration. International law provides for the exercise of the sovereign power of states to control the entry of non-nationals. However, more recent international conventions have shown a growing awareness of the failure of the law to protect individuals and their families from violation of their human rights and civil liberties. Whilst avoiding open conflict with the principle of sovereignty, national courts have strived to comply with the spirit of human rights conventions and have often decided in favour of individuals. Despite this, border and internal controls on entry continue to proliferate. Globally the failure to establish an adequate legal framework which takes account of forced migration caused by wars and natural disasters has provoked a debate beyond the traditional legal norms. This volume presents a selection of published work from a variety of countriest and addresses the theoretical questions and policy issues which will continue to tax lawyers in the twenty first century.

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New Directions in Analytical Political Economy brings together an important collection of economic research by scholars from a wide range of non-neoclassical research traditions.This book provides a flavour of recent research in non-neoclassical economic theory - drawing on classical, Marxian, post Keynesian and Kaleckian, structuralist, evolutionary and institutional approaches - using mathematical analysis. The papers deal with a variety of themes, including unemployment, financial crises and business cycles; technological change and long-run growth; value, prices and pricing, and international terms of trade; the role of agriculture, foreign exchange and fiscal constraint on growth, hyperinflation and wage indexation, and stability in mixed economies. The contributors base their analysis on the structure, history and institutions at hand, and not just on ever more elaborate optimizing principles as is fashionable in mainstream economics. However, they do not turn their backs on mainstream concepts and methods, using formal mathematical models to conduct their analysis in a rigorous way.Combining a broad approach to economics with mathematically based analysis, this important new book will be welcomed by economists wanting to go beyond the boundaries of neoclassical economics, without losing the rigour of modern economic theory.

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Johannes Klant's seminal work rests upon the analysis of the logical structure of economic theories and addresses the long-standing problem of the nature of economics by making a distinction between basic theories and specific models. The Nature of Economic Thought brings together in one volume Professor Klant's seminal work on the philosophy and methodology of economics. After a brief description of the history of economics and its position as science, art and philosophy, the book offers discussion of the logical structure of economic theories, Milton Friedman's use of metaphor and John Maynard Keynes's methodology including his view on the intuitive process and his adherence to Marshallian instrumentalism. The final paper presents an historical analysis of the natural order ideal in economics and critically assesses the approaches of Max Weber and Karl Popper.Always rigorous and cogent, the essays in this volume will be welcomed by the growing numbers of scholars interested in economic methodology and the history of economics thought.

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The Politics of Migration is an authoritative collection which includes the most important articles and papers that document and analyse the political impact and consequences of migration since World War II. It assesses the impact of migration on class conflict and politics in the host country and the strategies adopted by the state to manage the political activities and demands of new ethnic minority communities. It also covers the rise of racist politics, especially electoral support for anti-immigrant far right parties. Special emphasis is placed on the politics of citizenship and political engagement as the new settlers adopt political strategies in order to combat exclusion, racism and oppression and to achieve recognition and legitimacy.

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This two volume set reprints 37 important contributions dealing with international trade throughout the world during the rise of Great Britain to world dominance, the industrialization of Western Europe, and the political and economic expansion of European powers into Asia, Africa and the Americas.The period from 1700 to 1850 saw many dramatic changes in the world economy. Frequent war among the European nations also affected these changes, influencing the timing and perhaps the ultimate magnitude of intercontinental trade.In addition to discussions of commodity trade in different parts of the world, essays in these volumes deal with the effects of governmental policies towards the flows of capital and labour and the emergence of trading institutions and their impacts on economic development. Many deal with controversial topics such as the role of slavery and the slave trade on European development, the burdens of mercantilism, and the impact of European expansion on the economies of the less developed parts of the world.

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Migration, population shifts and flights from natural disaster have been known since the dawn of history, yet have only been rigorously studied in modern times. Are contemporary scholars of migration capable of evolving a single comprehensive theory which accounts for the diverse causes and implications of migration?In Theories of Migration, Robin Cohen has brought together a substantive body of scholarship from many disciplines and schools of thought which addresses the failure to produce one satisfactory general theory of migration. Attempts to construct a theory of migration have been constrained by the considerable variety of migrations which have to be considered - professional and unskilled, compelled and voluntary, settler and temporary, internal and international, and finally, illegal and legal. Perspectives arising from all the major social science disciplines are represented in this volume which features over 25 articles originally published in a wide array of professional disciplines.Theories of Migration shows that some important advances have been made across disciplines to create the building blocks of a theory which encompasses the many different forms of human migrations found in recorded history.

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John Bristow's wide-ranging review, based on primary sources, traces economic developments since the fall of Zhivkov in late 1989. The progress of the macroeconomy, sectoral developments, international relations, reform of the banking and fiscal systems, and privatization are all extensively examined by Professor Bristow. While focusing on policy and the failure of the Bulgarian political system to provide sufficient momentum for effective economic reform, this important book acknowledges the successes and recognizes the problems of framing policy in times of severe economic dysfunction.Accessible and up-to-date, The Bulgarian Economy in Transition will be welcomed by scholars, researchers and policy makers concerned with the problems of transition from planned to market economies.

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The Sociology of Urban Communities provides an authoritative collection of over 60 key articles by leading international contributors to urban sociology, together with an introductory article by the editor.The coverage is comprehensive, ranging from work on the role of cities in the transition from feudalism to capitalism and the nineteenth century origins of urban sociology, through the classic writings associated with the Chicago School and the Marxist new urban sociology of the 1960s and 1970s. The collection is completed by sections which focus on the urban consequences of contemporary economic restructuring and work which reflects recent developments in the sociology of gender, space and postmodernism.

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Trade, Development and Political Economy demonstrates the power of trade theory to illuminate issues, not only within its conventional boundaries, but also outside of them, in the fields of development, history and political economy.Featuring Ronald Findlay's key papers written over the past two decades, this volume addresses problems that are a mixture of the conceptual and the methodological - such as the theory of comparative advantage and the dynamics of interaction between the advanced and developing regions of the world economy - and the topical and historical - such as the impact of oil shocks on employment and the role of trade and slavery in the emergence of the Industrial Revolution. The majority of these papers develop a model derived from the rich tradition of classical and neoclassical trade theory, and apply that model to a relevant analytical or historical question. The themes in these essays range over the intersection of international trade, economic development and political economy ensuring that this volume will be of interest to all those concerned with the implications of trade theory for economics, development and related fields.

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This important volume features essays dealing with a wide range of theoretical, measurement and policy issues in environmental and resource economics. Anthony Fisher is an internationally acclaimed environmental economist whose work combines relevance with intellectual rigour.The integration of environmental considerations into decisions about extractive resource has been a central theme of Professor Fisher's work. The essays in this collection range from exercises in the pure theory of resource depletion to applications of theoretical and empirical techniques on the management of energy and water resources. Particular attention is given to uncertainty about environmental values and the irreversibility of certain kinds of resource depletion. Featuring work on a wide range of topics and adopting a breadth of approaches, Environmental and Resource Economics will be welcomed by researchers, practitioners and policymakers.

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Early French Feminisms, 1830-1940 is a source book of personal and political writings by Flora Tristan, Pauline Roland, Jeanne Deroin, Helene Brion and Madeleine Pelletier, five key individuals in the development of women's rights in France. Though their writings and political activity ranged over more than a century, these women were linked by their commitment to feminism and to socialism and can be considered as seminal figures in French political thought. Their journals, letters and diaries have not been available in print or in English translation and the same is true of many of their published works. As well as extensive extracts from the original source material, Early French Feminisms, 1830-1940 contains biographical and contextual historical material which sets the writers in their period and links them to contemporary feminist and socialist debates. Tristan, Deroin, Roland, Pelletier and Brion were active in the growth of trade union organization, Saint-Simonian utopian socialism, the birth of the parliamentary Socialist Parties, pacifism during the First World War and the neo-Malthusian or birth control movement. Ranging across personal and public genres of writings, the texts reproduced for this volume, placed in historical context, demonstrate the difficulty which these largely self-educated women faced in entering the public sphere and the political persecution which they faced courageously. Early French Feminisms, 1830-1940 clarifies an important chapter in feminist and socialist militancy which will be of interest to students and scholars of women's studies and modern French history.

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This major original reference work includes over one hundred specially commissioned articles on the lives and writings of women who made significant contributions to economics. It sheds new light on the rich, but too often neglected, heritage of women's analysis of economic issues and participation in the discipline of economics. In addition to those who wrote in English, some notable Danish, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Russian and Swedish women economists are included. This book will transform widely-held views about the past role of women in economics, and will stimulate further research in this exciting but underdeveloped field. It is dedicated to the memory of Michele Pujol, a pioneer in the field.

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This collection of Malcolm Sawyer's essays develops the post Keynesian analyses of unemployment, imperfect competition and macroeconomics. This important volume focuses on the causes of unemployment, a central concern of contemporary post Keynesian economics whose origins can be dated from the response to the high levels of unemployment during the 1930s. After explaining why conventional economic analysis cannot properly comprehend the phenomenon of unemployment, Professor Sawyer's book explores the relationship between demand-side and supply-side causes and argues for the relevance of both for the analysis of unemployment. Other issues discussed include the relationship between macroeconomics and imperfect competition, the post Keynesian approach to pricing and post Keynesian perspectives on industrial economics.Unemployment, Imperfect Competition and Macroeconomics, critically but sympathetically, evaluates and extends the contribution of post Keynesian analysis, and discusses the problems which those analyses face. Bringing together contributions from a major scholar working in this field, the book will be welcomed by all those interested in the post Keynesian approach and the contributions it can make to economic analysis.

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This lucid, up-to-date book takes a fresh look at the application of cost-benefit analysis (CBA) to environmental problems ranging from wildlife protection to global warming. Cost-Benefit Analysis and the Environment is structured into two parts. Part one provides a critical up-to-date account of the theory and practice of CBA as applied to the environment. Part two focuses on a number of specific case studies, in particular ozone damage to agricultural crops, wilderness land use, recreation and nitrate pollution. The application of CBA to the greenhouse effect is used to illustrate the limitations of the method. The book summarizes the major problems CBA faces in environmental application. This book will be highly relevant for the growing number of undergraduate and post-graduate courses in environmental economics and management, as well as being of interest both to academics researching in these areas, and to other professionals concerned with project appraisal and the environment.

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The concept of quality measurement is revived and given new meaning in this innovative new book. Steven Payson argues that quality measurement is an important issue in the study of price indices and in the additional areas of product innovation and evolutionary change. The user-value definition of quality is forcefully defended against the producer-cost definition, and a new method of measurement is introduced - the representative good approach (RGA). The RGA provides a new means for measuring quality over long periods of time by examining historical documents. A discussion of evolutionary change lays the groundwork for the identification of two processes: quality improvement and cost reduction. Using data from the Sears Catalog, quality improvement and cost reduction rates are estimated for five goods between 1928 and 1993: shoes, sofas, gas ranges, window fans and air conditioners, and cameras. The results are dramatic, supporting ground-breaking hypotheses on the determinants of quality improvement and cost reduction.

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What is the origin of game preferences and payoffs, how are they aggregated and what are the implications of interdependent preferences? What is the importance of information for building game models? How can game models be used to analyse empirical cases? At the cutting edge of current modelling in international relations using non-cooperative game theory, this collection of original contributions from political scientists and economists explores some of the fundamental assumptions of game theory modelling. It includes a theory of game payoff formation, a theory of preference aggregation, thorough discussions of the effects of interdependence between preferences upon various game structures, in-depth analyses of the impact of incomplete information upon dynamic games of negotiation, and a study using differential games. Numerous illustrations, case studies and comparative case studies show the relevance of the theoretical debate. The chapters are organised to allow readers with a limited knowledge of game theory to develop their understanding of the fundamental issues.Containing theoretical discussion of the basic game theory assumptions - as well as means of going beyond them - Game Theory and International Relations will be welcomed by all those interested in the empirical application of game theory models in international relations.

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Markets and the state are usually seen as opposed to each other as instruments of economic development. This important new book attempts to go beyond the state-market debate, which it sees as largely the intellectual legacy of neoclassical economics, and the related pendulum swings of opinion favouring one against the other. Arguing that development can be hindered and fostered by both the state and markets, the contributing authors suggest that the real challenge is not to choose between them but to find ways in which their virtues can be utilized jointly to further the goals of development. The first part provides some general perspectives which critically analyse mainstream neoclassical views on states and markets while also providing some alternative approaches. The contributors to the second part examine state-market interaction in Latin America, South Korea and India.

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The rapid development of a series of technologically advanced, industrial economies in the post-war period has challenged conventional understandings of economic growth. The emergence of these economies has reinvigorated the long-standing debate about why some countries grow quickly, and reach high levels of productivity, while others fall behind. Until the emergence of the new growth theory, few neoclassical economists focused upon this important issue despite the existence of a rich tradition among economic historians and economists from more heterodox traditions. The Dynamics of Technology, Trade and Growth draws upon contributions of scholars from different theoretical backgrounds to discuss why economies succeed, or fail, in creating the infrastructure, finance and technology to develop rapidly and 'catch-up' with others. After an overview by the editors of theoretical and practical developments in the economics of convergence and divergence, the book features chapters which discuss the origins of the post-war catch-up and convergence boom, convergence in trade and sectoral growth, capital accumulation, investment and resource allocation, specialization, technological change, and the potential contribution of information and communication technologies. The distinguished contributors bring together in one volume a breadth of scholarship on economic growth, convergence and divergence, ensuring that this book will be widely read by economists interested in growth, technical change and economic development.

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This volume provides the most important essays and papers on urban and regional policy, making it a convenient summary of the key theories, approaches and research results.The study of sub-national politics is no longer mainly concerned with the urban political decision-making process and now focuses on the political, economic and social preconditions for urban policy. As the articles and papers reprinted in this volume demonstrate, local and regional politics are increasingly important features of most Western democracies. Economic and political life are more and more determined by changes occurring at the local, regional and global levels rather than at the national level. This volume seeks to cover the most important elements of research on local government with a particular emphasis on different approaches and theories of urban political economy. The volume covers, in turn, the study of urban politics and government, theories of local government, central-local relationships and local autonomy, local politics, the political economy of local government and regional policy.

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New Approaches to Welfare Theory draws on recent work from the sociology of social action, feminist literature and critical social theory, to counter the current impasse in social policy. Interdisciplinary in scope and including work by economists, psychologists, philosophers and social workers, it offer insights into the meaning and dynamics of claimsmaking in modern society.The introduction examines the claims which groups - especially groups of marginalised people - make against institutions, the problems they have in articulating their aspirations and needs, and the structured institutional responses to their claims. This is followed by a series of papers on the problem of establishing the moral justifiability of claims, including contributions from both the contractarian and utilitarian approaches. Later sections concentrate on the constraining and enabling effects of social structures on claimsmaking - including the various excluding and filtering institutional responses - and the interactions both of claimsmakers with political institutions and of social groups with institutional patterns. The volume concludes with an afterword by the editors discussing the relationship between the universalist and particularist approaches, the two perspectives on the moral dimensions of welfare which feature most prominently in the book. The essays and papers in this book draw upon a broad background of research, teaching and practical experience by a distinguished group of scholars. New Approaches to Welfare Theory will be welcomed by students and researchers, as well as by social workers and policymakers, as an enlightening and instructive discussion of the problems and implications of an approach to welfare from the perspective of social action.

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American Economists of the Late Twentieth Century is a collection of essays on the work of 22 contemporary US economists. The essays summarize, place in perspective and appraise the work of a diverse array of accomplished scholars whose writings respresent the best, the most promising and the most innovative in the US. The economists whose work is discussed include Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Paul Davidson, Nancy Folbre, Robert H. Frank, Robert Heilbroner, David Kahneman and Amos Tversky, Paul Krugman, William Lazonick, Gregg Lewis, Richard R. Nelson and Sidney G. Winter, Mancur Olson, Nathan Rosenberg, Thomas Schelling, Vernon Smith, Robert A. Solo, Joseph Stiglitz, Richard Thaler, Lester Thurow and Oliver E. Williamson. The emphasis of the collection is on both the quality and diversity of the work - of different ways of doing economics as it is presently practised.Warren J. Samuels has brought together a series of original essays written by economists who are distinguished in their own right. Historians of economic thought, methodologists, general economists and specialists in the fields represented by the subjects will welcome American Economists of the Late Twentieth Century as a significant contribution to our understanding of contemporary American economic scholarship.

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The Politics of the Environment brings together 25 classic essays on the political theory of the environment, ranging across environmental philosophy and political, social, legal and economic aspects of environmental action. Prefaced by an editorial introduction situating these materials in the context of the ongoing environmentalist debates, this collection provides beginners with a comprehensive introduction and specialists with a useful reference edition of widely dispersed materials on which any subsequent contributions must build.

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The role of the peasant has been a major theme for agricultural economists throughout the ages. 'Irrational' decision-making among peasants was as likely to worry scholars in medieval Islam as in twentieth-century Brazil or eighteenth-century France. The efficiency of smallholdings as units of production was as important in nineteenth-century Germany and Mexico as in twentieth-century India and sub-Saharan Africa.In The Peasant in Economic Thought, a distinguished group of scholars examines the role of the peasant in agricultural economies from a variety of cultural and disciplinary perspectives. Beginning with a paper on the peasant proprietor in classical economics, the volume continues with work on Friedrich List, Thomas Robert Malthus and Thomas Chalmers, J.S. Mill and the Hutterites of Manitoba, rent in Fabian economics, and the peasant in nineteenth century Mexican liberal thought. Later papers focus on the Brazilian peasantry in nineteenth century economic thought, land in Medieval Islamic thought and decision-making in contemporary African peasant households.Economists, historians and environmentalists trace lines of influence - centring on John Stuart Mill's liberalism and Auguste Comte's positivism - which affected debate in England, Latin America, Canada, India and sub-Saharan Africa.

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In the aftermath of the debates between Keynesians and monetarists, this book provides a lucid, concise overview of the most recent developments in monetary theory. Professor Visser has written an up-to-date survey which discusses major issues such as crowding out, the new classical macroeconomics, the breakdown of the stable money demand function, buffer stocks and currency substitution.Currency problems in general have come to the fore after the collapse of the Bretton-Woods system. The book addresses topical issues including Hayek's proposal to denationalize money as well as theoretical issues, such as the search for the microfoundations of monetary theory. This is an important, up-to-date survey of recent developments in monetary theory, and the economic reasoning which underlies it. The use of mathematics has been kept to a minimum.

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In this far-reaching and insightful monograph, Richard Wagner exposes the failure of the United States constitution to overcome the tyranny of the majority so feared by the Founding Fathers. Recognising that to the extent a written parchment is enforceable, it is through the construction of a self-supporting balance of private interests, Professor Wagner sketches a balance between the principles of good constitutional order and the placement of guns of self-interest necessary for the preservation of the rights to life, liberty and property. He concludes his analysis with an assessment of the prospects of converting the rent-seeking state into an entrepreneurial state self-interestedly committed to classical liberal principles of constitutional order.The author clearly demonstrates why the tyranny of the majority cannot be prevented by constitutional parchment unless the institutions of society are designed to offer complementary support to limited government and the rule of law. Parchment, Guns and Constitutional Order offers a solution designed to harness the political process to that objective.

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This essential book collects together, for the first time, the writings of Deirdre McCloskey on economic history and the rhetoric of economics. The essays have been presented to show McCloskey's evolution over time: from economist to critic, positivist to postmodernist, conventional economist to feminist economist, man to woman. Measurement and Meaning in Economics allows the reader to experience an astonishing personal and intellectual journey with one of today's most fascinating economists.McCloskey argues that economics has become ahistorical and narrowly scientific, which is a harmful development for a moral science. In all of the papers presented in this volume she writes with historical consciousness and critical understanding, in an attempt to repair the dysfunctional relationship between economics and the humanities.This book should be read not only by students and scholars of economic history and philosophy, but by all those concerned with the state of economics and its place in the social sciences.

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These volumes bring together important recent works by economists and philosophers on foundational topics; including the idea of utility and the role of preferences; interpersonal comparability and the commensurability of values, the relationship between rationality and morality, the status of rules, rights and norms, and fairness and equality.These readings collected here provide an overview of the key structural issues at the interface of ethics and economics. This reference collection will be welcomed by all those with an interest in economics and philosophy.

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This distinguished collection - selected and introduced by Marc Jarsulic - demonstrates the contribution that non-linear techniques can make to our understanding of business cycles.

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The Public Choice Approach to Politics presents some of Dennis Mueller's most important contributions to public choice and public economics. Employing the contractarian-constitutional methodology of public choice, Professor Mueller examines the properties of several voting methods and representation systems as well as questions of equity and justice. Constitutional issues, such as the nature of constitutional rights and the elements for an ideal constitution, are also addressed. The essays in this collection include discussions of Pareto optimal redistribution, the redistribution over time of the benefits from collective action, Rawls's social contract, the social discount rate, and the relationship between contractarianism and different concepts of morality. The volume also includes chapters on the methodology of public choice, the work of James Buchanan and the Virginia School and a survey of the public choice literature.This book brings together in one place Dennis Mueller's key articles and papers on public choice, making it of interest to all economists and political scientists working in this area, as well as to sociologists, philosophers and lawyers.

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The Handbook of Economic Methodology is a major multidisciplinary reference work on the developing field of economic methodology. It consists of more than a hundred specially commissioned essays by leading scholars from around the world. This definitive volume provides detailed and authoritative coverage of crucial topics and issues that have developed in recent decades and introduces a variety of emerging themes which economic methodologists have begun to explore. This comprehensive Handbook includes a variety of substantive entries in which experts in the field summarise past achievements in economic methodology and indicate the direction of future research. They provide biographical entries to introduce important economists, methodologists and philosophers. The volume also focuses on economic issues to which economic methodology is central and wider intellectual themes that have impinged on economic methodology, from general movements in intellectual history to broad philosophical themes. Orthodox and heterodox approaches to economics and epistemological, ontological, logical and normative dimensions of economic methodology are discussed and evaluated. This magnificent reference work presents a state-of-the-art analysis of the evolution of economic methodology as well as prospects for its future development. The Handbook of Economic Methodology will be indispensable to those with an interest in economic methodology, the philosophy of economics and the history of economic thought.

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This important book offers an overview of Spanish economic development in the last hundred years. It supplies the reader with a variety of papers which deal both with the central issue of Spanish economic history, namely the relative backwardness of the economy, and with specific topics, including demography, human capital formation agriculture, industry, economic policy and finance. The editors have written a new introduction to accompany the volume.

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This volume brings together some of the most important articles on the topic of financial intermediaries. Financial Intermediaries puts recent developments into an appropriate historical setting, with seminal works by Edgeworth, Arrow, Gurley, Shaw, Baumol, Tobin and Stigler combined with more recent ones by Fischer, Black, Weiss and Stiglitz.

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Transforming Socialist Economies presents - for the first time - an account of the initial attempts to transform the centrally planned economies of Czechoslovakia and Poland into modern capitalist economies.Both countries have adopted 'shock therapy' aimed at the fastest possible transition but with disappointing results. Poland appears to be on the brink of permanent depression and political paralysis. Czechoslovakia is only now beginning to show the first signs of economic recovery and faces the prospect of partition. In seeking to explain these disappointing results, Dr Myant critically analyses recent economic performance and past attempts at economic reform. He shows the weaknesses in the theory behind 'shock therapy', considers the political processes that led to its adoption and analyses its impact on the economy, on relations in the workplace and on political life. The result is a provocative and enlightening view of economic reform which will be essential reading for economists and political scientists.

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In an age of intense international competition, enterprises, regions and nations depend on their organizational capabilities to gain competitive advantage in global markets.This volume brings together critical scholarly contributions to historical and contemporary debates over the origins and characteristics of organizational capabilities that result in competitive advantage. Included are case studies drawn from textiles, chemicals, automobiles, computers and agriculture that illustrate how organizational capabilities generate sustained competitive success. In a new introduction, the editors, who have themselves been in the forefront of analysing the dynamics of innovation and industrial development, provide a state-of-the-art survey of the subject.

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